I also like rail

Radiative cooling is a great developing technology, but ultimately puts out a tiny percentage of what the panels put out. Your link leaves out that it's about 3% of the generation of panels during the daytime, leading to an incredibly inefficient system to handle even the smallest portion of the peak load around dusk. Batteries are a great idea for homes with current technology, but on a generation and delivery scale ultimately useless with what we have today. I'm not saying emerging or green technology is a bad thing by any means, but before an investment like that is made by a state, there needs to be the technology to generate a fiscal return or the bills will get loads higher than when they started. Small applications of this around Portland, OOB, Lewiston, Scarborough, Bangor, even Sanford would be great, but 300 miles of underground transmission and possible generation is beyond foolish with the current infrastructure and technology we have. Money much better invested in a state wide rail system in my own opinion.

Looking forward to reading the book (— before it’s a tv show)

Just so we’re clear, this all has fuckall to do with who owns your distribution utility.

Yet, they still build a highway there, that highway is maintained and it’s still easily accessible

Seriously, I work for a construction company and we often drive all the way from Portland to Sunday river for projects. We need to go to that neighborhood at least 20 times a year. Bangor to Holton is 118 miles. If you hire one maintenance worker in Holden, and one maintenance worker in Bangor, you don’t even need to put a guy in Millinocket.

Not an issue

York Harbor has a similar walk. I'd recommend checking it out if you haven't!

This. Generally you end up capturing contracts during acquisition.

It depends on the specific language of the contract you signed.

It's Uber gentrified. Completely changed in the past decade or two. Lovely in the off season though.

I’ve lived in Bar Harbor. It’s very safe and queer friendly. Tinder is honestly a good place to talk to people there I feel like. I’m not queer but a close friend of mine is, and it’s the type of place where everybody knows each other. Just be nice, you’ll have a bunch of friends in No time - I mean that.

> This isn't about solar power

That is the topic and I'm not deviating it to argue about something that no one is disagreeing with...

> Holding the Chinese power grid up

No one is doing this.

Saying China is doing a good job at building up their infrastructure isn't saying they have the best grid ever, its just stating a fact that their renewable energy and infrastructure spending is both modern-oriented and proven efficient towards their goal of creating a robust, green power grid. As proven by several European countries, Japan, the US, South Korea, and even super rural places in Africa. China is just doing a lot more of it - in part because they need to, to get off coal and make their grid more robust.

China is also working on curtailment efficiency (Mongolian parts wasted about 10-12% because the solar panels are producing more than the curtailment can handle) and are doing so, in part, by developing a combination of centralized and decentralized "mesh network" solar panel grid system that's shown to be highly effective. A model the US should be more oriented towards.

Again, for a country that went through their industrial revolution 100 years after us - who are, in effect, 100 years behind us in power grid infrastructure building and development.

By... doing things like what is specifically in that picture and in this post.

"Huge National Park Was Suggested For Around Katahdin Like 10 Years Ago" is a better title

My dumbass thinking Wyman in Yarmouth was coal. It’s #6oil. Still cheaper at 3 cents to 5 for oil per KWH

Also, solar panels work at night now and storage of that energy is an issue but really, every single grid should have more battery power than it does

I think he was just NOT COP. Probably got tired of people slowing down when he got behind them.

> southwest

Lol reading some comments in this thread makes me think that ad actually worked for a lot of people. "who's gonna pay for it?"

All of us and our grandkids if we don't get the fuck out of conventional energy methods ASAP when the planet starts running out of water and food.

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Sounds about the same. Climbed it a couple years ago with good weather and clear skies. Maybe a dozen people at the very top at one time, and maybe 50 or so people just below the summit, either coming up or down. But spread out pretty evenly so it didn't feel crowded at all. There's a big rock scramble passed the tree line that does a good job of slowing the traffic flow lol.

It's basically 1/4", stop effective generation in my experience. An inch and it's all ogre.

15° angle and snow stayed on ours for weeks.

Dust? Are you living in some different part of the state? Where have you seen large dust clouds from the interstate in any season other than a few short weeks in late spring when the salt and sand is dry on the roads?

Solar panels are fine with a few inches of snow, not feet of it or worse if plows pile it up. And diodes can't melt a half inch of gravel that's there all winter and spring.

But the alternative is that we will need a few hundred miles of sun-tracking motorized panel units that sit on top of concrete foundations, in the median of highways that motorists can crash into, and plows can repeatedly blast and destroy with snow, salt, gravel, and whatever else is on the road.

So it will be $983 bazillion? We should just launch a satellite into space with a few hundred panels on it, and have a really long extension cord that comes back down to Earth.

Better do away with trees, rocks, telephone poles, concrete dividers...

Surely you would crash into a guardrail before hitting the panels

North of Bangor is one of the most sparsely populated places East of the Mississippi.

The federal government should invest in green energy but our state shouldn't administer a program based on a half-baked Reddit post. Maybe hire an expert or put out an RFP to see what types of ideas people who work in the industry have.

There are thousands of trees in the median. Or, are you thinking of the short bit between Gray and NH?

Maine doesn't have coal plants. The closest is in Rumford and only uses coal as a secondary fuel source if they run out of biomass. Maine hasn't burned an ounce of coal for generation since 2019. Even then I highly doubt maintenance on any of our generation facilities would even begin to touch the operating costs of underground transmission lines and solar panels that only generate at 30% capacity, with no ability to store energy for peak usage time after sundown.